Nightmare
by Hikaru Irving
Summary: Oneshot. None of it was supposed to happen. He had joined Shinra to better his life, not worsen it. He never enlisted for the deaths of his friends, for four years of torture, or the nightmares of a monster eating materia with teeth that crushed bone.


Hikaru: Bored at eleven o'clock at night, wired by chocolate covered coffee beans. Yep.

Disclaimer: I do not own FF in any way, shape, or form, nor do I make any material profit. Just some fun on the part of an extremely caffeinated teenager. Need I say more? Actually, I do. Crossover elements; mainly other FF characters making cheesy cameos.

--

He had seen the training runs. He had seen the men in action. He had seen what a battlefield looked like after the deployment of one SOLDIER 1st Class. SOLDIERs 1st Class were serious, strong, mentally and physically, determined, enduring, fought until their--or the enemy's--last breath.

Cloud Strife could never hope to be in SOLDIER. He was a small teenager from a country town, shy, demure, afraid to speak openly or even make eye contact. He was bad with a sword; hell, he was even a bad shot. It took him three tries to pass the firearm handling classes at the academy.

After working in the Shinra company for a while, strange things began to occur. SOLDIERs 1st Class deserting, rebelling against Shinra, Junon, Midgar and even the Shinra Headquarters invaded by the company's own weaponry.

Cloud had thought it was just a consequence of working in the world's most powerful political, commercial, and military force on the planet. But he had yet to see the true horrors within the company.

It was just an accident, really. He was returning to his barracks after a long overtime night shift, that consisted of, interestingly enough, standing guard at some random door. Then, passing by a door, he'd heard a sound.

If he hadn't heard that sound, he never would have those awful nightmares. If he hadn't heard that sound ... if only ... no, if only he weren't so damn curious. His mother always told him that curiosity not only killed the cat, but bound lead weights to its feet and tossed it into the river.

Cloud never liked cats much.

He was on the sixtieth-odd floor, hunting for another employee to give him the correct key card to get to the next floor down, when passing by a door, he heard that sound. It sounded like a cross between a cat hissing and a wolf growling.

The door was unlocked, so Cloud let himself in.

Crouching at a cart carrying broken or defective materia was this--thing. He could never properly describe it; he couldn't even remember much save the overpowering, sickening stench of mako, the strange growling-hissing, and then the hideous thing--body corrupted, all black like soot, with glowing gold eyes--eating the materia.

Eating the materia, the shards sparkling every time it was bitten, fluttering to the ground. The sound it made--it sounded like teeth crunching solid bone.

Cloud had run, visions of the materia devouring monsters stuck in his head for endless nights to come. He should have just shot the thing--how did a monster like that get into the building?

It never occurred to him that the creation of the monster was in fact Shinra's doing.

That wasn't the end of it. The monster wasn't restricted in its movements. Wherever Cloud was alone, in the dead of night, the monster would come and find him. At the ends of corridors, across the huge lobbies, even during his night shifts.

It took Cloud some time to realize the monster was looking for him. It got close to him eventually--Cloud was too terrified to shoot it. But the monster wasn't looking to harm him.

"Cloud, was it?" It said in a raspy voice, as if something happened to its voice to make it so hoarse. "I've been watching you. You want to join ... SOLDIER?"

It had sounded like a child, a child suffering every worst hardship imaginable. So Cloud stayed in that corridor and listened to the monster talk.

"You don't want to enlist." It said, gold eyes focused on the floor. Quite abruptly Cloud was overwhelmed with a feeling of remorse. "I was incompatible with the amount of mako they tried to inject me with ... resulting in ... what you see now."

"You mean ... you were a normal person once?" Cloud asked in a choked voice, half of him refusing to believe it. A monster was a monster!

... Right?

The corrupted being merely shook its head sadly. It bared its teeth, glittering with shards of broken materia. "I have to ingest materia to stay alive now. All because I tried to enlist in SOLDIER."

Ingesting materia to stay alive--materia was a super condensed form of mako, the knowledge of the Ancients, powers forged in the Lifestream ... did that mean this person could use magic without equipping materia?

The being apparently read Cloud's mind. "Yes, I can. That's the only reason why they keep me. By eating new kinds of materia, I learn new abilities. That's what I am now ... their war dog, kept on a short leash. I can never leave the company. I'd die without materia." The last bit was said as a ghost of a whisper, but Cloud heard it loud and clear. It rang painfully, echoing down the halls. He wondered why no one rushed out doors demanding what this awful, excruciating speech was.

"Actually," It continued in that terrible hoarse voice that sounded like bones scraped on concrete, "I'm not even supposed to be out here, or talking to you. But you're the first person I got to talk to besides Hojo."

"I wish ... I wish I could help you ..." Cloud feebly offered, in truth wanting nothing more than to distance himself from this apparition and the twisted activities of the Science Department. What the hell were they doing, anyway?

"Leave. Leave this place. Leave this company. It'll be only a matter of time before something happens and Hojo'll have his claws in you."

With those cryptic words, the being shuffled away, hanging its head, resigned to its fate. Its fate to be nothing more than the puppet, the marionette moving at the master's will.

Cloud liked to think it was a bad dream. But if it was a bad dream, why did he feel the most awful pain he'd ever felt in his life, and why did he see such terrible things even when he was awake? It wasn't supposed to be like this.

He'd joined Shinra to better his life, not make it worse. This wasn't part of the contract; torching entire towns, killing innocent people, elite officers massacring his hometown and nearly killing him in turn!

Unable to do anything for an indeterminate period of time, unable to help himself, regaining consciousness only to find the bloodied body of his best friend filled with lead, leading an innocent young woman to her death--

None of it was supposed to happen.

He would wake up in the dilapidated church in the old slums of Midgar, of the once grand city abandoned and destroyed post Meteor Fall. He would sit among the flowers that still bloomed even in the absence of their dedicated caretaker. He could swear he still heard their voices--were they there, or was he merely dreaming? He had liked to dream.

Not anymore, not when he still woke seeing visions of soot-black monsters eating materia with teeth that crushed bone.


End file.
